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Volume 1, Number 5

May, 1988

The Frontiers of Soviet Culture: Reaching the Limits?
by Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov

Since the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February
1986, cultural perestroika (restructuring) has consisted of an
attempt on the part of the liberal intelligentsia to redefine the
boundaries of the permissible in creative and intellectual
work.! Its leading representatives have included Elem Klimov
and Vadim Abdrashitov in film, Evgenii Evtushenko and
Andrei Voznesenskii in literature, Vitalii Korotich and Egor
Iakovlev in journalism, Sergei Zalygin and Grigorii Baklanov
in literary journals, and Kiril Lavrov and Mikhail Shatrov in
theatre. While prominent figures in television are more dif-
ficult to identify (with the exception of Vladimir Pozner), the
broadcasting evidence of perestroika would certainly include
the youth program “View,” “Spotlight on Perestroika,” “Posi-
tion,” and the numerous telebridges between the Soviet Union
and Western countries.

In its broadest possible outlines, the cultural platform of
the gorbachevtsy has included the encouragement of a broader
spectrum of opinions, a defense of the individual’s right to ex-
press those opinions and a willingness to address a wider array
of social problems than had previously been permitted.

Glasnost’ (plain-speaking), the catch-word under which
many of the cultural reforms have been carried out, symbol-
izes a very different undertaking from that of iskrennost’ (sin-
cerity), the initial catch-word of the early Khrushchev Thaw
years. First-used by Vladimir Pomerantsev only nine months
after Stalin’s death,” iskrennost’ signalled an opportunity for
the liberal intelligentsia to step away from the public sham of
Stalinist rhetoric and to explore instead the introspective side
of the individual psyche. /skrennost’ represented a speaking
from the heart, and its most eloquent cultural expression was
lyric poetry.

Glasnost’, by contrast, has represented an opportunity for
the liberal intelligentsia to step away from the personal
reticence required of them under Brezhnev. It has signalled a
chance to speak out publicly about corruption, historical dis-

tortions and a myriad of other issues. At its very basis,
glasnost’ is a speaking from the mind, and its primary cultural
expression is the document: new publicistic prose, documen-
tary film, drama a clef, and investigative journalism intended
both to expose existing shortcomings and to galvanize popular
support for social reform.

The cultural totem chosen to symbolize this effort to
“revolutionize” the stagnant society has been, not surprising-
ly, Lenin himself: visionary, headstrong, unafraid of the op-
position. From Shatrov’s play The Brest Peace (written in
1962; published in Novyi mir, IV, 1987), with its strong as-
sociative links between Lenin and Gorbachev, to journalistic
discussions of the merits of the NEP period, to the republica-
tion of authors unavailable since the twenties, the Soviet public
has been encouraged to view this most recent change-of-power
as a return to a purer revolutionary consciousness — in short,
as a form of neo-Leninism.

The wide-ranging cultural reforms undertaken since
Gorbachev’s ascension to power in March 1985 continue
today. At the same time, however, they provide a classic
demonstration of Marxist dialectics at work: every revolution
carries in it the seeds of its own counter-revolution. The reform
of culture — liberal perestroika, the overhauling of cultural
administration, the reorganization of artistic unions — has
specific limits. Counter-reformation takes energy once those
limits are reached. Three of the several tendencies we shall ex-
amine here are the emergence of conflicting perestroikas,
retrenchment in cultural administration and the growing
favoritism in the new union leadership.

Multiple and Conflicting Perestroikas

Since the ouster of Boris El’tsin it has been increasingly
difficult to ignore other emergent strains of cultural
perestroika that, nurtured in the environment of glasnost’,

1 See Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov, “The Outposts of aes Art: Recharting Soviet Cultural History,” Framework, 34 (1987): 59-106.

2 Pomerantsev, “Ob iskrennosti v literature,” Novyi mir, XII, 195

THE W. AVERELL HARRIMAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY OF THE SOVIET UNION
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have taken on an existence of their own quite different from,
or even hostile to the agenda of the liberal intelligentsia. These
other forms of cultural expression have become so assertive in
the past several months that the original model of perestroika,
directed by the gorbachevtsy and described briefly above, now
impedes our vision of the current cultural reform process in all
its diverse and contradictory tendencies.

One of the most evident trends resulting from
Gorbachev's call for perestroika is the explosion in youth cul-
ture: rock music, street theatre, and the appearance of punks,
hippies, metallisty (heavy-metal music fans), and motorcycle
gangs on the streets of major Soviet cities. While greater
tolerance and artistic documentation of such phenomena are
very much in keeping with the spirit of the gorbachevtsy —
witness Juris Podnieks’ documentary film /s /t Easy To Be
Young? (1986), Rashid Nugmanov's Ya-Ha-Ha (1987) and E.
Kokusev’s You Just Have To Draw the Bowstring (1987) —
the youth culture’s own forms of cultural self-expression
(heavy-metal music, spray-painting, and outrageous regalia)
are hardly in keeping with that spirit. Emboldened by the in-
creased official patience with and journalistic interest in their
sub-culture, the youth has begun to enact its own perestroika:
theirs is a seizure not of the Unions, but of the streets; their
audience consists not of interested spectators, but of alarmed
citizens, parents and militiamen, unwilling witnesses who in-
evitably associate this ‘‘asocial behavior” with the greater
leniency permitted under Gorbachev. What began as a side-
effect of the older elite’s cultural perestroika has become a
restructuring of the youth’s own popular-culture values, life-
style and leisure-time activities.

Even within the realm of elite culture, the liberal intel-
ligentsia no longer holds a monopoly on the reform process.
Artists of the experimental avant-garde, who have long oc-
cupied a marginal place to the left of the liberal establishment,
have begun to explore outlets for creative expression and the
distribution of their work undreamt of during the Brezhnev
years. Arrangements for the Western purchase and exhibition
of works by alternative artists Il’ia Kabakov, Erik Bulatov and
others are now routinely conveyed to official art salons by
telex. The phenomenon of home-based film-making, or
“parallel cinema,” by such young artists as Igor’ and Oleg
Aleinikov flourishes. The unofficial literary journal Epsilon-
Salon co-exists alongside the new official journal Rodnik,
which has already published verses by unofficial poet Tat’iana
Shcherbina and by rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov, and
plans in 1988 to include works by unofficial writers Viktor
Erofeev, Vladimir Sorokin and Dmitrii Prigov.

The status of the experimental avant-garde has changed
considerably since the period 1981-85, when the unofficial
Leningrad poetry circle, “Club-81,” could exist only with the
acquiescence (and, some would maintain, the participation) of
the local security forces. So, too, has their status changed from
the days in 1986, when the horizons of literary acceptability
for Prigov, an absurdist writer and Conceptualist artist, were
limited to an unsigned brief appearance on the pages of the

journal Tearr (IV, 1986) or a mention in an, extraordinary ar-
ticle by the literary critic Mikhail Epshtein.

The avant-garde has begun to take the initiative in plac-
ing not only its own works, but also those of émigré, neglected
or outcast writers. While the liberal establishment worried
over the appearance in Novyi mir of Iosif Brodskii’s verses
(XII, 1987) and Vladimir Nabokov’s Nikolai Gogol’ (IV,
1987) as well as the projected publication in 1988 of George
Orwell's /984, the unofficial Epsilon-Salon had already
printed epigraphs from Brodskil. Rodnik published Nabokov’s
Invitation to a Beheading (starting in IX, 1987) and has
scheduled Orwell's Animal Farm tor 1988. While the Union
of Artists debates the fate of émigré artists, the independent
artists’ group “Hermitage” held two exhibits of émigré works
in September and October 1987. While official cinema critics
mull over the extent to which Andrei Tarkovskii should be
reincorporated into the history of Soviet cinema, the unofficial
cinema journal Cine-fantom has published the screenplay for
his last film, Sacrifice (1986).

If the urban youth and the experimental artists are
engaged in their own acts of cultural re-definition, so too is
another, much larger group, loosely referred to in Soviet
society as the russisty (russophiles), or Russian nationalists.
Outstanding representatives of the russophile movement in-
clude writers Valentin Rasputin and Viktor Astaf‘ev, literary
scholars Vadim Kozhinov and Petr Palievskii, painter Ilia
Glazunov, sculptor N.I. Rozov and architects Viktor
Vinogradov and Oleg Zhurin. Its principal periodical outlets
are the journals Nash sovremennik, Moskva, Molodaia gvar-
diia and the newspaper Literaturnaia Rossiia. While its most
liberal figure may be Zalygin, editor of the journal Novyi mir,
its MOst conservative expression is surely represented by the
organization Pamiat’ (“Memory”), known for its monarchist,
Russian Orthodox, and (though Pamiat’ members deny the
charge) anti-Semitic tendencies.

To limit a discussion of russophile thought to Pamiat’,
however, is both to discredit the movement's more valuable
cultural contributions as well as to underestimate its appeal
and influence as a brqad-based celebration of all things Rus-
sian. This position inevitably includes a categorical rejection
of both Western and Soviet multinational cultures, along with
modernism in general.

While it might appear at first glance that the liberal leaders
of cultural reform have much in common with the goals of both
the youth culture and the avant-garde, their very espousal of
diversity is what divides them; their defence of the individual
is what individuates them. “Pluralism” as a positive term may
allow for a range of opinions on the pages of Ogonek;
“pluralism” as a negative term precludes that same range,
whether on the pages of Molodaia evardiia” or in speeches by
Egor Ligachev, Party Secretary in charge of ideology, warn-
ing Soviet teachers of “political and ideological pluralism.”

The price that the liberals have paid for their advocacy of
mnogoobrazie (diversity) is a strong united front vis-a-vis the
conservative russophiles. Absorbed with the issues of
Stalinism, émigré culture and the unfinished business of the

Epshtein, “Pokolenie nashedshee sebia. O molodoi poezii 80-kh godov,” Voprosy literatury, V, 1986.
See, for example, letters defending Stalin and the purges in Ogonek, nn. 33, 44, 48, and 49, 1987.

Mikhail Ustinov, “V otvete za vremia,” Molodaia gvardiia, 1X, 1987: 219-87.

Uchitel’ skaia gazeta, August 27, 1987.

2

sixties and seventies, the liberal elite has had no time for con-
temporary experiment, either youthful or artistic. The youth,
in its enthusiasm for the newly-tolerated popular culture, has
no patience for the artistic refinement of either the elite or the
counter-elite. The experimental avant-garde, involved in its
own self-referential search, is uninterested in the social con-
cerns of either the liberal reformers or the turbulent street
youth.

Instead, it is the russophiles who offer the only cohesive
(if not coherent) philosophy, based on a return to an idealized,
authoritarian past, freed from the “bankrupt” schemes of both
Westerners and the ethnic minorities, both industry and col-
lectivization, both Brezhnev and Gorbachev. As a holistic
world-view with the capacity to unite a wide spectrum of so-
cial groups ranging from the Academy of Sciences to the
narod (people), russophilia is appealing both in its sweeping
solution (a return to Russia’s past) and in its explanation of
current social problems (everything that prevents a return to
Russia’s past).

To push the point further still, these are the new dissenters
from Gorbachev’s reform program, whether they belong to the
“loyal opposition” at Molodaia gvardiia (the contemporary
analogue to Novyi mir in the 1960s), or to the “disloyal opposi-
tion” in Pamiat’. Much more than such “New Left” figures as
Boris Kagarlitskii or even editors of underground journals
such as Sergei Grigoriants and Lev Timofeev, the ultra-rightist
Pamiat’ activists are a fundamental challenge to the existing
status quo. Gorbachev’s assertion, “I do not think that there is
anyone who would now consider the idea that it is possible to
manage without the assistance of the Party,” was publicly
called into question by members of the Pamiat’ conference
held in the autumn of 1987 at Leningrad State University,
where one participant maintained that “nothing can be
changed in our country without a renunciation of Marxism as
a profoundly Zionist doctrine.”

Our purpose is not to warn of the existence of a Pamiat’
counter-conspiracy to the imagined Judeo-Masonic plot for
world domination. It is rather to suggest that for every fifty-
five-year-old gorbachevets emboldened to act upon the cur-
rent general secretary’s cultural mandate, there is a
fifty-five-year-old russist who has endured the years of
Brezhnev stagnation with the expectation that having bided
his time and played by the existing rules, he would legitimate-
ly inherit power. The ensuing frustration is compounded by
the perception, largely accurate, that the growing social disor-
ders in many ways replicate Western tendencies so abhorrent
to the russophile philosophy: urban youth problems, minority
unrest and the “deterioration” of cultural standards.

Re-Reading the “Literature of Glasnost’ ”

If the present moment in Soviet cultural politics is charac-
terized by greater caution, it is tempting to recall the “heady”
days of 1985-87, when the cultural front was dominated by the
so-called liberals. At that time, three literary works in par-
ticular had enormous resonance among the intelligentsia and
7 Literaturnaia Rossiia, July 17, 1987.

in the Soviet press: Rasputin’s The Fire (Nash sovremennik,
VII, 1985), Astaf’ev’s Sad Detective Story (Oktiabr’ ,1, 1986),
and Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Executioner’s Block (Novyi mir,
VI, VIUI-IX, 1986).

During the late summer of 1986, each of these three works
was regarded as a revolutionary event, as literature’s response
to the Party’s socio-political call for perestroika. This
synchronic view was based on the links between the abrupt
change in political rhetoric (g/asnost’), on the one hand, and
the unexpected dominance of a new genre (novaia publitsis-
tika, or new publicistic writing), on the other. Novaia publi-
tsistika was seen as the literary analogue to glasnost’: both
advocated plain-speaking as the way to expose failures,
pointedly asked “what is to be done?” and sought answers
among the populace-at-large rather than the centralized state
agencies.

By early 1987, the three works began to be discussed
diachronically, that is, as a historical series. This enabled
readers to trace socio-political failures to the loss of
pochvennost’ (connection to the soil). In The Fire, this was
depicted as the deracination of the countryside, the enforced
severance of natural ties, and the resulting ethical disorienta-
tion. In Sad Detective Story the absence of moral values was
situated in a society that was alcohol-ridden, corrupted and
now innately criminal. In The Executioner’s Block the social
destruction of personal values and the use of drugs were in-
dicative of a nationwide loss of dukhovnost’ (spirituality). The
shift from a purely synchronic reading revealed an important
feature in these works that was initially undervalued: whereas
the implied readers of all three are city-residents, the victim-
subjects are, for the most part, displaced country-folk, collec-
tive farm workers, or “boom town” squatters. In the peculiar
politics of literary texts, the pleasure of reading became a kind
of acknowledgement of guilt — the city-dwellers’ penance in
front of the represented and abused narod.

The current reading of these three works by the liberal
Moscow intelligentsia is the most ominous. The Fire is now
read back through the prism of Rasputin’s recent ultra-
nationalistic interview (Literaturnaia gazeta, January 1, 1988)
and article (Nash sovremennik, I, 1988); Sad Detective Story,
back through the racism and xenophobia of Astaf’ev’s
“Gudgeon Fishing in Georgia” (Nash sovremennik, V, 1986),
as well as his correspondence with historian Natan Edelman;
and The Executioner’ s Block through the anti-progressive and
anti-technological views of Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts Longer
Than A Hundred Years (Novyi mir, XI, 1980). Even
Aitmatov’s heavy-handed use of Christ motifs and Christian
symbolism is seen as an attempt to co-opt the spiritual search-
ing of the oppositional intelligentsia and to integrate it into a
much larger state agenda, which many citizens fear is not so
incompatible with Pamiat’s call for a revived and purified
pravoslavie (Russian Orthodoxy).

If we Western scholars have made one major error in our
assessment of Gorbachev’s perestroika, it is this: we have
tended to perceive all cultural changes taking place since

8 Sovetskaia kul’ tura, November 24, 1987. It would, however, be a mistake to cast Pamiat’ simply as an anti-Marxist movement. Judging at least from public
documents, such as the Vozzvanie of December 8, 1987 and the Obrashchenie of February 1, 1988, as well as from our personal conversations with the
Pamiat’ aktiv, the organization perceives itself to be the caretakers of Russian culture (including Russian Orthodoxy), which long predates the Party’s

triumph of 1917, and which has been badly served by “cosmopolitans,” technocrats, and other

Syntaksis, no. 17, 1987: 80-87.

3

ry

dark forces” that have gained control of the Party.

March 1985 as traceable in an unmediated fashion to his
leadership, without taking into account the formidable and at
times antagonistic counterweight of the russophile movement.

This error has led us to throw into one political basket both
russophile works, such as The Fire, and liberal reformist
works, such as Anatolii Rybakov’s anti-Stalinist novel
Children of the Arbat (Druzhba narodoy, 1V-VI1, 1987). That
these two works belong to distinct historical moments has long
been clear; what has been less clear is their allegiance to dif-
ferent political camps. The first is a nationalist alarm (nabat),
rallying readers to salvage Russia: the second is a bell of sum-
mons (vechevoi kolokol), calling citizens to bear witness to an
era deliberately neglected since the early 1960s. It is this cru-
cial difference that gets overlooked when all works critical of
the status quo get lumped under the specious and misleading
category “the literature of g/asnost’.~

Art as Product vs. Art as Process

Following closely upon the halcyon period of 1986-87,
when the Soviet public was inundated with forbidden,
neglected, or forgotten works at a rate unprecedented even in
the Thaw period, several major editorial positions passed into
the hands of reform-minded liberals.

In the midst of all this upheaval, it is easy to lose sight of
two factors, now becoming increasingly significant in cultural
politics: first, a number of influential journals remained
strongholds of conservative values, undergoing virtually no
editorial changes from 1986 to the present; second, the publi-
cation of a controversial work in a specific journal in and of
itself signifies nothing about changes in that journal.

Such is the case with the publication of Nabokov’s The
Defense in the conservative journal Moskva (XII, 1986).
Asked to explain a move so out of keeping with both the
journal’s profile and that of the editor-in-chief, Mikhail Alek-
seev himself replied that “it was time to return Nabokov to our
readers,” adding that “he was after all a Russian.” And
Brodskii? “Brodskii is not a poet ... also, he is not Russian." ps

What, then, is the essential difference between Alekseev’s
publication of Nabokov in Moskva and Viacheslav
Gorbachev’s excoriation of “nabokovshchina” in Molodaia
evardiia?'| Different political camps? Different degrees of
commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika? Neither.
The essential difference is between tactics and strategy within
the same political grouping, where the primary concern is to
weather the gorbachevskaia perestroika until such time as the
russistskaia perestroika, already underway, will have more
favorable conditions for success.

Unlike the youth culture and the experimental artists, who
are battling for turf that is of little interest to anyone but them-
selves, the gorbachevtsy and the russisty are engaged in a
struggle for control of key positions on editorial boards, in ar-
tistic unions and in scholarly institutions. While the Western
press has focused on the products of this struggle — Nabokov,
Rybakov, and, most recently, Vasilii Grossman — much more

important gains have been made by conservatives in affecting
the artistic process: the appointment of Feliks Kuznetsov as
Director of the Gor’kii Institute of World Literature; the ap-
pointment of Dmitrii Urnov as editor-in-chief of the journal
Voprosy literatury, the rejection of applications by prose-
writer Tat‘iana Tolstaia, poet Marina Kudimova and critic
Vladimir Novikov to the Writers’ Union; the attempt — albeit
unsuccessful for the time being — to appoint Kozhinov as
head of the pivotal Theory Sector of the Gor’kii Institute.

While the conservatives continue to consolidate their con-
trol over the cultural process, the liberal editors have begun to
implement a new round of sensational publications in the
struggle for subscribers in 1988. As in 1987, the January is-
sues of several journals included some especially provoking
texts: Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Grossman's Life
and Fate (Oktiabr’, 1-V), both delayed for a quarter of a cen-
tury: Shatrov’s new play Forward... Forward... Forward
(Znamia). In part, this is an attempt to expand circulation and
readership. Equally important, it is an attempt to revive the
energy of the publishing process, which went into a semi-dor-
mant stage in the last quarter of 1987.

An examination of the titles slated for serial publication
in 1988 reveals four essential categories of works, three of
which extend from 1986-87, while the fourth marks a new (and
potentially dangerous) departure. The first category consists
of works by Soviet writers that have been blockaded — Paster-
nak, Grossman, Vladimir Vysotskii’s Novel About Girls
(Neva); the second, of works by contemporary Soviet (Rus-
sian and multinational) authors that have been recently com-
pleted: Vladimir Orlov’s The Apothecary and Aitmatov’s
“novyl perestroinyi roman,” The Madonna in the Snow"? in
Novyi nur; Anatolii Pristavkin’s Woman from Riazan in
Znamia; Otar Chiladze’s The March Cat in Druzhba narodovy.

The third category consists of new publications by émigré
authors, most notably Nabokov’s Lolita in Inostrannaia
literatura. The publication of several poems by Brodskii last
year seems to have opened the way for a more extensive
rehabilitation, if that term can be used for a poet who never
had the chance to publish anything in the Soviet Union prior
to his enforced emigration in 1972. > Now that the zapret (ban)
on publishing living émigré authors has been lifted slightly, a
new pool of manuscripts has become available to Soviet jour-
nals. For the time being, however, that pool may be restricted
to those émigrés who, like Brodskii, did not publish literary
texts in the Soviet Union prior to emigration. At the top of this
list is Sasha Sokolov, whose novels — A School for Fools
(1976), Between Dog and Wolf (1980) and Palisandria (1985)
— have had an avid readership among the liberal intelligentsia
for more than a decade.

The fourth category is the most problematic: the tradition
of anti-utopian fiction, which in the Soviet Union has been
consistently labeled “anti-socialist.” The dysutopian tradition
is most notably represented in Soviet literature by Evgenii
Zamiatin’s We. Znamia has announced that it will publish We
in 1988, while other journals plan to publish Huxley’s Brave

10 Sally Laird, “Soviet Literature — What Has Changed?,” Index on Censorship, vol. XVI, no. 7, 1987: 10.

11 Molodaia gvardiia, VII, 1987: 235-42.

12 A pejorative pun playing alternately on the meanings “new novel about restructuring” or “newly restructured novel,” but implying that Aitmatov is merely
engaged in what is traditionally dismissed as kon” 1unktura, that is, opportunistic hackwork.

13 Despite Brodskii’s acrimonious letters to Oleg Chukhontsev (poetry editor at Novyi mir), other journals plan to publish poems by Brodskii this year — Neva
(III), Junost’ (V), Druzhba narodov — while Ogonek intends to publish some of his articles, and /nostrannaia literatura has commissioned Viktor Erofeev

to write a lengthy article on Brodskii’s poetry.

New World (Inostrannaia literatura), Orwell’s 1984 (Novyi
mir) and Animal Farm (Rodnik). In a similar vein, Neva has
announced that it will publish Kafka’s The Castle, while /n-
ostrannaia literatura will publish Koestler’s Darkness At
Noon. The road from Koestler to Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle
or Cancer Ward is not difficult to foresee.

As impressive as this new list of forthcoming titles ap-
pears at first glance, one feature should not be overlooked: the
reduced number of suppressed “blockbuster” publications in
the last months of 1987. This fact suggests that the editorial
“pipeline” might be drying up (although the continued home-
lessness of Isai Kuznetsov’s novel The Staircase, for example,
would indicate otherwise). It also lends weight to the notion
that the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution
provided a fortuitous moment for consolidation of conserva-
tive forces.

Yet these two explanations account for only part of the
story. Whether or not the supply of suppressed works has been
depleted, the liberal reformers have chosen to focus their ef-
forts on this source of manuscripts rather than on works by
younger, lesser known, or new writers. Simply put, the
decision to publish Grossman, Rybakov and Vladimir
Dudintsev is simultaneously a decision not to publish less es-
tablished, contemporary writers. If, therefore, the pipeline is
drying up. it is doing so in part with the participation of liberal
editors.’

As for the seventieth anniversary, it is not a causal factor
in the slowing down of the reform process, but simply an op-
portunity for the conservative forces to consolidate power at a
faster rate than would otherwise be possible. That this con-
solidation was already underway in November is not only evi-
dent in the political sphere — witness El’tsin’s ouster after his
October 21 speech at the plenary meeting of the Central Com-
mittee of the CPSU and Gorbachev’s call for “revolutionary
restraint” in his speech of November 2. It is also acknowledged
directly by political commentator Fedor Burlatskii in his one-
act “piéce-a-clef,” First Lessons (One Year Later) and by Mos-
kovskie novosti editor Egor Iakovlev in his Vienna press
conference of November 20, 1987:

At first all the opportunities which were opened up in regard
to democratization were taken up by the most progressive and
liberal forces in our society. The more conservative elements
were at a loss, so to speak, and in disarray. But now these con-

servative elements have understood that democracy can also
be used by them.

Collective Work, Cultural Controls and
the Emigré Tradition

As we have emphasized elsewhere,'° the Union of
Cinematographers and the newly formed Union of Theatrical
Workers have undergone the most turbulent re-organizations,
have occasioned the greatest promise of artistic
breakthroughs, and have been in the forefront of the struggle
to curtail bureaucratic, administrative interference in the crea-

tive process. Though the so-called “radicalism” of these two
unions caught both Western observers and Soviet “cultural
workers” equally by surprise, there are several reasons, only
partially grounded in that “sacred” realm called Art, that
provide an explanation.

First, whereas writing and painting are, almost exclusive-
ly, activities performed by individual artists in relative
privacy, cinema and theatre production are, by virtue of their
media, essentially collective activities carried out as a set of
public exchanges. Put somewhat differently, writers and
painters have extensive control over their means of produc-
tion: pen and paper; brush, paint and canvas. They have the
luxury (should they choose to utilize it) of “creating for the
drawer”: unpublishable manuscripts can be filed away, circu-
lated in typescript, or read aloud at small gatherings of friends
and guests; unexhibitable paintings can be stored, displayed in
the apartment, or included in private showings.

By comparison, cinema and theatre production are socio-
economically “marked” because the means of production (as
well as the means of performance and distribution) are owned
by the state: cameras, sound-booms, studios, editing equip-
ment, prints, cinema-halls, etc.; stage and auditorium, cos-
tumes and props, lighting and sound equipment, etc. Again put
somewhat differently, filmscripts are not films, playscripts are
not plays. “Guerilla” theatre remains, unfortunately, only a
minor exception to this rule.

While the collective nature of these two media does not
preclude intense political disagreement and artistic rivalries
between individuals, it is at the same time predicated on in-
tense political and artistic allegiances and on organized work-
ing relations. These allegiances and working relations develop
their own history and extend far beyond any immediate crew,
project, or production. In fact, precisely these relations lie at
the center of the organized dissatisfaction with the preceding
union administration that exploded at the Fifth Congress of
Cinematographers,’ and with the absence of acomprehensive
union administration that turned the Fifteenth Congress of the
All-Russian Theatrical Society (VTO) into the First Congress
of RSFSR Theatre Workers (October 1986).'*

Second, even as the collective nature of artistic work in
film and theatre production provides a proto-organizational
structure for workers in these media, it simultaneously makes
it infinitely easier for the cultural monitoring agencies to con-
trol the actual production and distribution of the artistic object.
From beginning to end, the creative process in cinema and
theatre production is determined by the need to accommodate
already existing republic and local (obkom, gorkom, and
raikom) policies. The possibility of future changes in these
policies is a factor that cannot be accommodated by these two
media because they are ruled by present policies once the
transformation from text to performance gets under way.

The stagnation in Soviet culture during the last decade of
the Brezhnev administration is nowhere better demonstrated
than in cinema or theatre, more specifically by their absence

14 We hasten to add that the literary scene is not entirely without new talent. In addition to stories by Tolstaia, recent works by new or lesser known writers
include the novellas Anna Petrovna by Gennadii Golovin (Znamia, II, 1987), A Humble Cemetery by Sergei Kaledin (Novyi mir, V, 1987) and Captain

Dikshtein by Mikhail Kuraev (Novyi mir, LX, 1987).

15 Roland Eggleston, “Moscow News Editor Gives Press Conference in Vienna,” Radio Liberty, 487/87: 5.
16 Framework 34; “Soviet Cultural Politics and Cultural Production,” JREX Occasional Papers, 1987.
17 Piatyi s” ezd kinematografistov SSSR. oe elena a otchet. (Moskva: Vsesoiuznoe biuro propagandy kinoiskusstva, 1987).

18 Literaturnaia gazeta, December 3, 1986.

in the international arena. While literature and painting
developed an extensive network of unofficial (or counter-cul-
tural) balances to the insufferable “artlessness” of official
trends, the stranglehold over cinema and theatre production
exercised by various control agencies effectively closed down
these two media for foreign consumption and undercut domes-
tic interest. This loss of audience can be attested by the over-
all decrease in film screening attendance (especially in the
Russian Republic, where most films are produced each year)
and the empty theatre halls outside of Moscow, as noted by
Aleksandr Iakovlev in his Kaluga speech.” The critical situa-
tion that prevailed by the early 1980s provides an important
insight into the bellicose and combative rhetoric of reformers
during the congresses of the two unions.

Third, precisely because of the collective nature of artis-
tic production and the stultifying controls:over cinema and
theatre, these two media never developed a parallel émigré
tradition that jeopardized in any way the vested interests of
either the old or the new guard. Again, the situation was (and
remains) quite different for the individual arts: émigré litera-
ture and painting have a lengthy tradition that extends through
all three “waves” of emigration. Individuals, not artistic col-
lectives, can emigrate. This fact has precluded the possibility
of creating an alternative to official, domestic cinema and
theatre production.

Throughout this discussion, music remains the transition-
al moment between the dimension of “private enterprise” in-
volved in the production of literature and painting, and that of
“state enterprise” required of cinema and theatre production.
The critical difference, however, lies in the fact that, as a non-
verbal art, music is culturally “exportable” precisely because
it is not linguistically bound. The implications of this fact es-
cape neither the émigré musicians and composers, with a long
tradition of accomplishments outside the Soviet Union, nor
Soviet officials exporting to the West a wide range of works
by official Union composers, from Tikhon Khrennikov to
Rodion Shchedrin.

Paradoxically, the absence of an émigré tradition in
cinema and theatre production has ensured that the struggle
over the control of cultural production continues entirely
within the corresponding union, that the search for alternative
models continues to be an internal and national search. From
this point of view, it is interesting to note that the posthumous
“rehabilitation” of film director Tarkovskii and the “reintegra-
tion” into the official canon of the two films he made in the
West — Nostalghia (1983) and Sacrifice — have occurred
side-by-side with invitations to theatrical director Liubimov to
request a visit home and the “reinstatement” of his productions
at the Taganka Theatre.”? Unlike other émigrés from cinema
and theatre, who have either moved out of cinema and theatre
or have fully integrated themselves into the corresponding
Western industries — for example, film director Genrikh
Gabai and cameraman Iasha Sklanskii — Tarkovskii and
Liubimov posed a very real danger: the establishment of an
émigré tradition.

19 Sovetskaia kul tura, July 21, 1987.

Settling Disputes: A New Mafia?

The turbulence occasioned along the entire cultural front
by the Congress of the Union of Cinematographers in May
1986 resulted in several inevitable misperceptions: rapid
developments were seen ipso facto as radical reforms; a
change of administrative leadership was seen as the dissolu-
tion of a bureaucratic apparatus; and the establishment of a dis-
putes commission to review Goskino bans on “shelved” films
was seen as a major step in abolishing censorship mechanisms
restricting artistic expression.

Recent history has provided ample evidence to justify this
overly sanguine view of the Soviet film-making industry, and
not surprisingly, scholars and citizens on both sides of the great
divide continue to see the Cinematographers’ Union as being
in the vanguard of cultural reform. Clearly there are many ac-
complishments that must be credited.

“Recent” Soviet films have dominated international film
festivals for the past two years, winning a disproportionate
number of prizes after almost a quarter century of barely being
represented. “Recent” in this case refers not only to films that
have been recently completed, but also to the more than 120
films that have “recently” been released from the shelves of
Goskino after a delay, in some cases, of two decades.

New Soviet films — that is, films that have been under-
taken since May 1986 and therefore under the new mandate
— have addressed topics that were unthinkable less than three
years ago: problems of the youth counter-culture (Podnieks’
Is It Easy To Be Young ?); bureaucratic corruption in the Min-
istry of Culture (El’dar Riazanov’s Forgotten Melody for
Flute, 1987); the life- and soul-destroying abuses of Stalin and
Stalinism (Aleksandr Proshkin’s The Cold Summer of 1953,
1987); the inequities in the distribution of social goods and ser-
vices and the hypocrisy of official political rhetoric (Nikolai
Gubenko’s Forbidden Zone, submitted to Goskino for ap-
proval in January 1988).

Several Western organizations have developed plans for
co-productions, co-publications and scholarly exchanges. The
quality of film scholarship, especially in the journal /skusstvo
kino, has improved markedly in the past two years. The entire
film-making and film-distribution industries have begun to be
overhauled and transferred to the self-financing experiment,
with the attendant reorganization of studios, shooting crews,
review commissions, etc.

Once appropriate credit has been granted the Union,
however, certain disturbing features come into focus.
Received wisdom stipulates that the “radicalism” of the
Cinematographers’ Union can be demonstrated first and
foremost by the disputes commission established in May 1986
and its “success” in obtaining the release of films “shelved”
by Goskino over the last several decades. Other Unions, most
notably the Theatre Workers’, have called for the creation of
their own disputes commissions, but none has undertaken such
a “radical” step.

At the risk of sounding iconoclastic, we question this no-
tion of radicalism. The absence of a disputes commission in
the Writers’ Union has not prevented the publication of works

20 With the “re-premiere” of Viadimir Vysotskii on January 25, 1988, the new artistic director of the Taganka Theatre, Nikolai Gubenko (appointed in 1987),

has managed to reinstate the entire “Liubimov repertoire.” Liubimov himself has indicated that he will return t i
premiere of Boris Godunov at the Taganka (David Remnick, “Lyubimov to Visit Soviet Union,” Washington Po ApnI AS 198

ge: to stage the official

that have been held up for decades, nor has it impeded the
rehabilitation and publication of writing by external
(Nabokov, Ivanov, Zaitsev, etc.) and internal (Gumilev,
Klychkov, Glazkov, etc.) émigrés. The absence of a disputes
commission in the Composers’ Union has not prevented the
cautious introduction of rock and heavy-metal music into the
realm of official culture, nor has it impeded the release of
recordings by “rehabilitated” singers like Vadim Kozin or “un-
derground” bards like Aleksandr Rozenbaum. The absence of
a disputes commission in the Artists’ Union did not prevent
the two-part exhibition on Profsoiuznaia Street of paintings by
artists who had emigrated, nor has it impeded the “rehabilita-
tion” and reappraisal of Chagall, Kandinsky, and the Russian
avant-garde of the turn of the century.

Clearly the cinematographers’ disputes commission has
accomplished much, but equally clearly the other unions have
accomplished similar goals without a centralized disputes
commission. Moreover, there are increasing indications that
the disputes commission is not concerned with verifiable
public accounting for the shelved contents of the cinema ar-
chives at Belye Stolby outside Moscow. The commission can-
not be credited with the unshelving of Aleksandr Askol’dov’s
Commissar, and has not yet released any of Gabai’s work.

What is disturbing is the fact that observers have placed
such heavy emphasis on the mere existence of the commission
— in effect, on a purely formal, bureaucratic element — and
have credited it with routing the entrenched cultural conserva-
tives in the film-making industry. Yet none of the procedures
involved in “shelving” films has been reformulated. None of
the officials responsible directly (Goskino) or indirectly (the
former Union leadership) has been publicly named and made
accountable.

What, then, if anything, demonstrates the “radicalism” of
the Union of Cinematographers? During the past decade, it has
become a commonplace to dismiss former First Secretary Lev
Kulidzhanov, former Secretariat member Sergei Bondarchuk
and others as an entrenched artistic mafia with a stranglehold
over the Soviet film-making industry, as a band of political
lackeys, self-serving functionaries and cultural dinosaurs. It is
easy to forget that thirty years ago, when they broke into
prominence in the world of Soviet film, they were hailed (cor-
rectly) as “revolutionary” film-makers when measured by the
aesthetic norms and values that dominated Stalinist cinema,
just as the new prominent figures (Klimov, Abdrashitov, Pan-
filov, Bykov, etc.) are today hailed (correctly) as “revolution-
ary” film-makers when measured by the dominant norms and
values of Brezhnev cinema.

Let us close the circle we opened at the beginning of this
article: Kulidzhanov’s 1957 film The House I Live In (co-
directed with Iakov Segel) introduced iskrennost’ into Soviet
cinema. The film’s use of a mundane collective hero (the resi-
dents of a house) rather than the traditional heroic collective
led by a superior being marked a radical transformation of
characterization in Soviet film. It introduced the intimacy, dif-
fuseness and concentration on the petty details of day-to-day
survival so typical of Italian neorealism. This transformation,
in turn, was instrumental in changing the entire scale and
orientation of cinematic subjects: from the grandiose to the
commonplace, from the epical to the intimate, from the his-
torical to the present, from the romantic to the realistic.

In the same way, it is easy to forget that twenty years ago,
when “Kulidzhanov, Bondarchuk & Co.” took over the leader-
ship of the Union of Cinematographers, they were seen (incor-
rectly) as the banner-guard for major cultural reform in the
film-making industry, just as the new leadership (Klimov,
Abdrashitov, Panfilov, Bykov, etc.) is seen (correctly or incor-
rectly) as the driving force behind contemporary cultural
reform. Certainly by the mid-1960s Kulidzhanov’s and
Bondarchuk’s films marked a distinct turning away from their
achievements in the mid-1950s and back to the grandiose, epi-
cal, historical and romantic — Kulidzhanov’s Blue Notebook
(1964) and Crime and Punishment (1970), Bondarchuk’s War
and Peace (1964-67) and Waterloo (1970).

It is, however, merely a short distance from Bondarchuk’s
panoramic characterization and monumental scope to the
panoramic scope and monumental characterization of
Rasputin in Klimov’s Agony, Daria in Farewell (1980) or
Floria in Come and See (1986). All three films remain gran-
diose, epical, historical and romantic. We do not mean to deny
the absence of aesthetic, formal, and thematic differences be-
tween the films of the old leadership and those of the new. In-
stead we want to stress the existence of specific historical and
filmic continuums. Why? Because in the months since May
1986 another, more ominous pattern has begun to emerge, sig-
nalling the danger that one exclusionary bureaucratic ap-
paratus has been displaced by another artistic mafia that is now
in the process of entrenching itself.

A careful comparison of the new Secretariat of the
Cinematographers’ Union with a list of directors who have
been granted virtually unlimited access to the West (visas,
studios, companies, festivals, scholars and media) reveals con-
siderable overlap. It is all too easy to confuse the struggle for
cultural reform with the struggle for creaturely comforts,
whether those are defined as access to a domestic audience and
domestic goods or as access to multiple-exit visas and Western
film and video technology. Looked at in this light, it is but a

, 99

small step from glasnost’ to “grasp-nost’ .

Two Ends of the Spectrum: Television and
Individual Publishing

The centripetal nature of cultural reform in the year fol-
lowing the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress is weakening. We
can no longer speak of either glasnost’ or perestroika without
designating a possessive modifier: whose glasnost’? whose
perestroika? with what agenda and under whose mandate? As
the jockeying for position in the cultural establishment be-
comes of greater importance than the impulse for reform, it is
paradoxically the most tightly controlled arena of culture —
television — that remains the most active in broaching con-
troversial topics and lobbying for liberal reform. By
comparison, Ogonek, the analogue in the hard-copy media, is,
despite its mass nature, not characteristic of the overall state
of news publication.

Herein lies the dialectical moment in present-day cultural
politics. Television — with its sophisticated editing/censoring
capabilities (rendering it inaccessible to the amateur and thus
avoiding the risk of samizdat); its “freedom” from opposition-
al histories or émigré culture (thus avoiding the intrusion of
tamizdat or publishing abroad); its production process founded

on public answerability rather than individual opinion; its
potential for efficient mass distribution with minimum expen-
diture of either human or natural resources — is best able to
retain and propagate the early liberal spirit of Gorbachev’s
reforms described at the outset of this paper (diversity of
opinion, individual expression of opinion, breadth of permis-
sible topics). This is the case precisely because it has ceded no
actual administrative power to interest groups that would im-
pede that liberalizing process. By providing unlimited access
to the consumer/viewer while withholding technological ac-
cess from the would-be distributor/broadcaster, television as
a cultural outlet is vastly preferable as a medium for cautious,
graduated reform, insofar as it involves minimal risk with
maximum potential for influencing social change.

If television, as the most easily controlled medium, retains
the greatest potential for liberal reform, then individual
publishing, such as that unsuccessfully attempted by Iurii
Efremov, Veniamin Kaverin, and others to establish the inde-
pendent publishing collective “Vest’,” represents the least
controllable and therefore the greatest threat to graduated,
liberal reform. This is the case even though “Vest’” itself is a
liberal initiative. The Council of Ministers’ refusal on October
23, 1987 to permit publishing collectives is only one indica-
tion that it perceives political power already to be dangerous-
ly eroded by individual claims both from the right (Pamiat’)
and the left (the Western-oriented group Perestroika Club).
This refusal is based on the correct perception that publishing
collectives would inevitably provide not only a literary but
also a political forum for the New Right and the New Left.

The Council of Ministers’ instructions on independent
publishing does allow for a proliferation of vanity-press ar-
rangements through Goskomizdat, the state committee for
publishing and printing. This “vanity measure” does little to
alleviate the backlog of manuscripts and in no way substan-
tially alters the publishing process as a whole. It manages only
to create the appearance of change, while ceding no ad-
ministrative autonomy to individual enterprises.

But the implications of the Council’s instructions go fur-
ther still. Applied not only to publishing, but also to printing,
video screening ventures, and “other cooperatives in the
ideological sphere,” to quote the order signed by Council
chairman Nikolai Ryzhkov,7! the instructions are consistent

with a broader tendency beginning in late 1987 to redirect cul-
tural reform away from private individual initiatives (be they
publishing enterprises, political discussion circles, rock clubs,
or informal Russian Orthodox groups) and back into existing
institutions (be they the Writers’ Union, Goskomizdat, the
Party, the youth league Komsomol, or the newly formed
RSFSR Council on Religious Affairs).

The last of these institutions, responsible among other
things for ensuring that religious believers comply with laws
on religious associations, ~ provides an administrative body
for dealing with the burgeoning youth interest in religion,
without either involving the Komsomol or revising the
Komsomol’s long-standing ban on religious believers. Politi-
cal groups, rock clubs and other interest groups potentially
compatible with the Komsomol, on the other hand, would be
incorporated insofar as possible into Komsomol activities, ac-
cording to an internal draft of the Agitational and Propaganda
Department of the Komsomol Central Committee.

If this is indeed the governing tendency of the present mo-
ment, then two tendencies that will surely be played out in the
ensuing months are, first, to separate out those newly emer-
gent elements in each cultural grouping that are perceived by
the Party as anti-Soviet; and, second, to reabsorb those ele-
ments perceived to be adaptable to the Party’s own changing
cultural agenda. The first of these tendencies may be incom-
patible with Gorbachev’s original spirit of g/lasnost’; the
second may be incompatible with his liberal program of
perestroika.

Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov lived in Moscow from
1984 to 1986. They are working on a book about the politics
of culture under Gorbachev. Their work has been made pos-
sible by fellowships from the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies, the International Research and Exchanges
Board and the Institute of Current World Affairs. It was also
supported by grants-in-aid from the American Council of
Learned Societies and the Hewlett-Mellon Foundation. It
was assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee on Soviet
Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the
American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided
by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Ford Foundation.

The Harriman Institute Forum is published monthly by
The W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, Columbia University
Editor: Paul Lerner
Editorial Assistants: Robert Monyak, Rachel Denber
Copyright © 1988 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
All Rights Reserved. ISSN Number: 0896-114X.

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21 Bill Keller, “Soviet Halts Independent Publishing Cooperatives,” New York Times, February 3, 1988.
22 “APN on RSFSR Council on Religious Affairs” in “The USSR This Week,” Radio Liberty 366/88: 4.
23 Keller, “Soviet Youth Arm Seeks to Rein in Political Groups,” New York Times, November 8, 1987.